Chinese Red Bean Paste Cake

Finally I made my long awaited Chinese Red Bean Paste Cake! :D I got motivated after I saw it at SeaDragon blog. Since I have some red bean paste in the freezer and all the ingredients in the boxes, what the heck, let's do it. I adapted the recipe from Revised Chinese Snacks by Huang Su-Huei, published by Wei-Chuan's Cookbook.


Red Bean Paste Cake (Yield about 5~6 cakes)

Note: I modified this recipe to yield more thin pancakes. (updated Nov. 8, 2005)

3/4 cup all-purpose flour, sifted
2 large eggs
1 1/4 cup water

Red bean paste
Oil for frying
Plastic wrap for handling red bean paste

Step:

1. In a bowl, mix egg + water well. Add sifted flour and mix into a thin batter.

2. Grease a non-stick frying pan in medium heat. Add a scoop of the batter and rotate the pan to form a thin sheet. When cooked, remove and set aside. Do the same with the remaining batter.

3. Use a plastic wrap to press the red bean paste into square and transfer it to the center of the cooked sheet, remove the plastic wrap. Fold the sides of the sheet to the center to form a square shape. Seal the edges with some tapioca flour + water mixture ( 1 tsp. tapioca flour + 2 tsp. water). Do the same with the remaining sheet(s).

4. Heat the frying pan with 3 Tbp. oil and pan fry the square cake until both sides are golden brown and crispy. Remove and drain on paper towel. Repeat for the remaining cake(s). Cut the cakes into pieces and serve hot.

Note:

1. When making the thin sheet, make sure you wait until the sheet is set before attempting to remove it. If not, it will break apart. Since it's so thin, you don't even have to flip it over. When set, just remove it.

2. Make sure the red bean paste you use is sweet enough.

Moved In

After 3 days of moving, glad to say that we finally settled down in the rented house. We closed our house on Friday morning and passed over the keys to the new owners. It was our first time meeting the new owners as well and they sure seem excited. We were tired out from all the moving and cleaning, furthermore had to wake up early in the morning to go to the title company. All in all, we were glad to sell our house because that's mean we will get to move into our new house when it's done. :D

The rented place is actually pretty nice eventhough it's a 30 years old house. It has new carpet, countertop and new paint so it's pretty decent looking. I like the backyard because it's open space so no one can look inside the house and I could open my blinds 24 hours a day. Love to sit on my patio while watching Evy plays in the backyard, privacy is bliss. Better enjoy it while the weather permit. :)

Well, I'm not going to unpack most of the stuff because we will be moving again in 4 months. Thus my living room and front entry are packed with boxes, sure serves as a storage area for now. But if I feel like baking, I sure know where to dig those boxes.

Evy

Evy at 17 months. In a few days, she will be 1- 1/2 year old, yup...time sure flies on you. She can say 32 words already and what a fast learner she is. She understood a lot of things we said, so can't really say certain thing in front of her. As an example, her daddy said, "Don't give her the pensil, after she would poke it into her eye." And sure enough after hearing what her daddy said, she tried to poke it into her eye (she never know how to do that before). And she tried to do that again when her daddy said the same thing few days later. As you figure, I gave her pensil to express herself in writing and drawing, she knows how to write 1 and said it correctly at the same time. As for drawing, she can draw straight lines and circles already.

Will be MIA

Good news! We bought a new house which is currently being build and won't be ready until Jan next year. We just sold our current house and have to move out by end of this month. So, at the meantime, we will be staying in a rented old house until our house is ready. I'm very excited about my new house and can't wait to move in. :)

I have been spending the past few days packing my stuff. Oh lord...the stuff I have in the kitchen...one can faint. So not looking forward to packing but have to do it! Have to set aside certain items for Goodwill and giveaway too. I will move out of this house on the 28th so I probably won't have any Internet connection for these few days. And of course no cooking or baking or posting food pictures for some time until I'm settle down.

Chocolate Coffee Topping Mexican Bun

Made Mexican Bun with chocolate coffee topping the other day. I used coffee emulco & some instant coffee and found that I couldn't taste the coffee flavor. Perhaps the cocoa powder was over powering the flavor of coffee? Still need to experiment more with the topping. But here's the chocolate topping recipe.

Chocolate Flavor Topping

1/3 cup sifted cake flour

1/4 cup sifted icing sugar

1/2 stick of soften butter (or 1/4 cup)

1 egg

2 Tbp. Hersey cocoa powder

Steps:

Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Whisk until all blended and put it into a piping bag and pipe spiral on top of each bun. Bake in 375'F for 8-10 mins.

For the buns:

Use any basic sweet bun recipe. The filling will be salted butter straight from the fridge. Cut into cube to use as filling, about 1/2 Tbp. for each bun.

Pandan Chiffon Cake

I made Pandan Chiffon Cake for Lily's grandson one month old party. I had tried several recipes that used different quantities of eggs and found this recipe is the best. It used 6 eggs and always produced very high chiffon cake unlike the others that I have tried. I have used this to make almond chiffon cake, orange chiffon cake and lemon chiffon cake before. 

The above is the picture of the Pandan paste that I used, usually selling for 99 cent at the Asian grocery store.  This is the brand and paste that I recommend to produce a fragrant cake, essence and powder form are not recommended.